Category: Salesmen

I get most frustrated by people who are in the sales/retail/services business. This is usually caused by them doing what they are told, but not having enough of a brain to think on their own. You should enjoy some of these stories.

Haggling for a bookshelf

We have some friends that are coming to stay with us in a week. BookshelfWe needed to tidy up the room they are going to be staying in. Since we are avid book hoarders, we have too many books to put on the shelves we have. In our son’s room, we had a bookshelf that was full and then piled. Piles of books on top, on the sides and in front of it.

We definitely needed a new bookshelf.

We went downtown to an area where we had bought some wooden furniture before. The prices are not spectacular, but better than other stores. We wondered around through a few of the carpenter shops without seeing any bookshelves. One thing is very apparent here…people don’t really read much and there is not much of a need for every house to have 5 bookshelves like ours. Therefore, there are not many to be had in the stores.

We did, however, find one that we convinced ourselves was about right in size and price. The sticker said $120. Since it was obvious that it had been sitting there a while, we decided to try and haggle the price down a little. I should have started lower, but I offered the lady $100. I wanted that price to include the $8 delivery fee.

She countered with $110 and I pay the delivery fee. I then offered her $110 including the fee.

She thought for a few seconds and she said, “$100 plus delivery fee.” It did not take me long to think that through and I told her I would take it.

It was delivered yesterday afternoon and I saved $20.

Bread Maker

I was reading a thread over at the Fitness Rocks forum where they are discussing making your own bread. One of the participants said that the thread prompted them to go out and buy a bread maker. That caused me to remember our first bread maker we bought.

In the fall of 1998 we were working in a church in Nashua New Hampshire. One day we were out and saw an odd store called Building #19 in one of the nearby towns. Being the consummate bargain hunters that we are, when we saw the tag line “Good Stuff Cheap!” we had to check it out. Browsing the store (I think it was the old location in Manchester) we came across a bread maker for $5. We did not have much money in those days, but $5 was worth taking a risk on. Bread makers were selling at the time for well over $100. I forget which brand that one was, but it was a known brand.

I have a bit of skill with electronics and thought that if it was something simple that I could fix, then it would be worth the risk. Even if it cost $25-50 in parts, I could take the chance. So we snatched it up.

We were staying in a lady’s house who was very kind. She allowed us to test our bread maker right then, even knowing that the risk was that it would blow up and burn down the house. It worked perfectly. We used it for 6 years before selling it to move to Mexico. We had to scale back our amount of stuff we could stuff in the Suburban.

We were not without a bread maker long. Another family here had one that they were not using, so they passed it on to us.

We have had 2 bread makers in 10 years at the cost of $5. I wonder how much the Fitness Rocks forum member paid for his?

Now we just have to use it more often.

Site was down

I was chatting with my Mom on IM this evening about 7:00 when she told me that my websites were down (this one and www.missionarytalks.com). I thought that it was just a glitch and would be worked out soon. I waited an hour before calling 1&1 customer support.

I sat on hold for 40 minutes with some of the awfullest hold music. I finally spoke with a rep who told me that they would strive to have my site back up within 30 minutes. I waited 2 hours before calling them back. While sitting on hold with the second call, I got an email from them telling me that there were greater problems and that someone else higher up would be taking a look. But I did not see this message until after I got off the phone with the second rep.

The second customer support rep told me that my problem was being escalated up to the next level. I thanked him and asked what kind of time frame I might have to wait. I was prepared for him to say that it should be back up within a couple of hours. But was shocked to hear him say that they would “try” to have me back on-line within 24 hours!

Well, as it turned out, my site was back up within just a few minutes. Probably less than 10. But the frustration of thinking that I would have to wait potentially 24 hours before I was going again was irritating. When they tell you something like that they are really saying, “Don’t call us again for 24 hours.” Well, they would have gotten another phone call in the morning if it was not fixed.

I went to their site where they give a 99.99% uptime guarantee. If you click on the link at the top of the page for the guarantee, they go into detail telling how they are going to make this happen, but there is nothing that says what the guarantee entails.

I will be trolling through their site trying to find it. Does that mean 99.99% of a month? Of the total time I am with them? What does it mean?

If it is a month, then on a long month like March it would mean that if my site is down 45 minutes, then they failed. I was down over 4 hours. And do I get my money back? Or will they upgrade me to the better service which has SSH access? I am a bit embittered about the SSH thing. When I was looking at the different packages I sent an email to customer support asking them about SSH. I was assured that I would have SSH access with the package I was purchasing. After I signed up, I did not have it. I wrote back. Their reply, “sorry, that package does not have SSH access, you will have to upgrade.”

When I asked the rep on the phone about the 99.99% guarantee he told me, “We are sorry for the inconvenience this has caused you.” So do they guarantee that they will say “Sorry” if your site goes down.

Stay tuned for exciting details…

Burger King counter help

Today I was reminded of a story that happened a few years back when my wife and I were in language school to learn Spanish.

Often you will find while living in a foreign country that some people just don’t try to understand you. I have seen it in the US as well. People who have an accent often get ignored, or the listener does not even try to make out what the person is saying.

One day while we were in Cuernavaca, Mexico learning Spanish we went to Burger King for lunch. I stepped up to the counter and wanted 2 Whopper Jr. combos for the wife and me. Our boy would just have a bag of our fries. Good healthy meal.

I ordered “Dos de combo número cuatro. Sin cebolla.” (Two number four combos. Without onion.) My Spanish is not perfect, but I do pride myself on having pretty good pronunciation. Based on many of the people I work with, having better pronunciation than them is not too hard.

The girl behind the counter responded with. “No hablo inglés.” To which I just repeated my order in the best Spanish I could. She said again that she did not speak English and asked me to please speak Spanish with her. I told her that I was speaking Spanish and I repeated my order. She said again that she did not speak English.

At this point we were causing a scene. The lady behind me stepped up and repeated my order using exactly the same words I had used. The girl behind the counter thanked her for helping me and took my order through the lady behind me. I was a little embarrassed thinking that my pronunciation must not be as good as I thought.

After I paid and stepped down to the end of the counter I heard the lady behind me giving the counter girl “what for” because she refused to open her ears and listen. All she saw was that there was someone who was not a native Spanish speaker standing in front of her and she did not speak English. She never even tried to listen to what I was actually saying.

The lady then came down to where I was and apologized for the closed mindedness of some people. I don’t think that lady spoke any English either, but she said my Spanish was just fine and understandable. Being the foreigner, I did not want to make an issue of it. But this lady did not mind standing up for me.

So, next time you have trouble understanding someone who does not speak English just like you do, give them a bit of a break and be thankful that they are at least trying to learn to speak your language.

Can you make change?

We stopped in a McDonalds today for lunch. The bill came out to be $124. Before you have a heart attack, that is Mexican Pesos, not US Dollars. That comes out to be about $10.15 (USD).

All I had was a $500 bill and some small change. But not enough to pay the $124. I gave the girl behind the counter $524. She slid the $24 back to me and said the $500 was enough. I said “I know it is enough, but I don’t want a bunch of change back.” She replied, with a look of confusion, “But if you give me more money then you will get more change back.”

And they let this girl work with money?

I tried explaining to her that by giving her the $524 then she would just give me $400 back. “Yes sir, but that would mean that you get more change back. By just giving me $500 I give you less change.”

Fortunately a manager came up about that time. The manager told her to take the $524, punch the buttons to say how much money she got and give me the change that the machine said. The poor girl never understood how that worked, but she gave me $400 in the end. And, she probably never will understand it.

I am so glad that kids today are learning math so they can work these high value jobs.